


Mourning Colors

by Sholio



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post-Season/Series 01, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:35:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25782973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Roger Dooley's funeral.
Relationships: Michael Carter & Peggy Carter, Peggy Carter & Angie Martinelli, Peggy Carter & Jack Thompson
Comments: 17
Kudos: 88





	Mourning Colors

**Author's Note:**

> For a request on Tumblr for Jack crying. It's only a small part of this fic, but that was the seed this was germinated around.

Roger Dooley was buried on a cold gray day, more suited to March than to early May. Peggy had nothing suitably black to wear, so with some amount of distaste, she sorted through Howard's capacious closets, filled with the leftovers of innumerable love affairs, in search of something at least halfway suitable. Then she realized she could just ask Angie, which was how she ended up with Angie hastily taking in her aunt's mourning dress for Peggy's rather different proportions. Fortunately Angie's theatre background had given her plenty of experience at hasty last-minute tailoring to fit someone into a costume they didn't normally wear.

"You want me to come, English?" she asked, through a mouthful of pins as she busily touched up the jacket's waist tucks. "No big deal to get another set for me, not with a family the size of mine."

"You can't possibly _want_ to come to a funeral," Peggy said, pinning back her hair in the mirror.

"I'm thinkin' more than you might want a friendly face among all the suits." Having watched Peggy marched out of the Griffith in handcuffs had left Angie with a certain opinion of Peggy's male coworkers that Peggy couldn't even say was entirely unjustified.

"It's all right, Angie, please don't worry about it. It won't be only the men from the office; the switchboard girls will also attend. And Chief Dooley's family, of course." Peggy turned around and started to reach for the jacket, but Angie held it up and Peggy suffered herself to be dressed in it and then turned to regard herself in the mirror.

Well, she looked like an elderly Italian widow, which was unsurprising since she was wearing the clothing of one. She hadn't expected to be glad for the cool weather, but the dress was woolen and stiff even without the jacket over the top. On a hot summer day, she would have been dying.

"You want the hat?" Angie asked.

"No, I do not."

"It's got a veil."

"I am not Roger Dooley's widow, Angie."

"You're right, can't go upstaging the widow," Angie said, and then covered her mouth with her hand. Peggy looked at her. "Oh Peg, I am _so_ sorry. Caught up in the moment, couldn't help myself. I have _such_ a big mouth, you probably know that by now, just open it up and stick in my foot to the knee --"

"Angie. It's all right." She couldn't help smiling, and Angie caught it from her and they both started laughing, with both of them nearly choking as they tried desperately to stop, until Peggy half-sat, half-collapsed on the bed. It was Roger Dooley's funeral and she was laughing. She wiped at her eyes.

"It does feel like play-acting, just a bit, doesn't it?" she said, looking down at the stiff sleeves of the mourning dress. "It seems so strange now, when we buried so many during the war, with hardly time to grieve. The funerals were for those back home. After my brother's, this is the first time I've been to one." It was odd to speak of Michael so casually. Odder still to realize how long since she'd last thought about him, when once his death had burned like a fire under everything she did.

The last traces of a smile dropped away from Angie's mouth. "I didn't know you lost a brother, English. I'm so sorry."

"I'm not the only one who lost people in the war. You must have ..."

"Two cousins, one uncle," Angie said promptly. "But no brothers. Bobby was the only one old enough to be there for the fighting, and he took a bullet in the arm and came right home. Rocky and 'Milio got in at the very end, but never did much more than guard ammo dumps. English ... I'm sorry."

"It's all right." She tweaked the sleeves, suddenly feeling little urge to laugh anymore. "Thank you for the loan of the dress, Angie, and please thank your aunt as well."

Angie jumped up to straighten the jacket's shoulders. "She'd be glad to see someone getting some use out of it." 

***

The service was held at the graveside, and after the cold and gloomy day, a single spoke of sun picked that moment to spear through the clouds, turning the cemetery warm and humid. Peggy was, as she'd feared, overly warm in the wool dress. She let none of it show on her face, even as her hair turned limp in the humidity.

A Catholic priest gave a blessing, and Jack -- perfectly pulled together -- spoke briefly about Chief Dooley's service and heroism. There were a lot of people there, not just the entire SSR office, but also friends and neighbors that Peggy had never met. Roger Dooley had been well known and liked. It didn't surprise her; he seemed the type. But there was a sting to it nevertheless.

Daniel had greeted her briefly when she arrived at the cemetery, but she didn't see where he went, after. As the funeral party began to break up -- close friends and family going on to the reception, the rest drifting off -- Peggy found herself walking alone across the damp grass, between the headstones. 

The one piece of her funeral ensemble that had not been borrowed was the shoes, and she found herself thinking of the oiling and drying out that the shoes would need to keep them in good shape when she got back to Howard's tonight. These seemed like inappropriate thoughts for a funeral. But at the same time, she thought Dooley probably wouldn't mind.

It was only ... things like this _did_ make one think of all the others who had been lost. She had never been one to dwell too heavily on the past. But it did seem, at this moment, that it might be kinder if her brother were buried closer, or if Steve had a grave at all. She might have had somewhere to leave flowers, then.

Not, she supposed, that this was much comfort to Dooley's widow. Or those two little boys, standing clutching their mother's hands. At least Michael had not left behind a widow and children.

She had meant only to get away from the press of mourners and have a few moments before going back to the office. She hadn't realized she wasn't the only one who'd come this way until she heard the sound of soft weeping, the sort of choked-off sound of someone who was trying to cry quietly, without being overheard.

She really ought to turn around and go back; she had no wish to interrupt anyone else's private mourning. But she'd already come around the back side of a marble cenotaph, and it was too late: she'd seen who was weeping.

Jack.

He had his back against the white marble, a cigarette in one hand, and his other over his face.

As Peggy took a step back, feet whispering on the grass, Jack jerked his head up with a choked-off gasp, took a breath, and wiped his hand across his face. "Carter," he said. It was hoarse and weighted with a mix of anger and audible misery. He took another breath and straightened his shoulders and she could almost see him weighing himself down with the mantle of calm authority he'd projected during the funeral. "You want something?"

"No," she said. She took another step back. Things were ... freighted, with her and Jack right now. And she knew that she would have preferred to be alone if she were caught at such a time; the only thing better than never being seen in this state was to be seen only briefly.

But she also knew that if she walked away, it wasn't as if he would stay here; she could see him stamping out the cigarette and going back to the press of mourners, shaking hands and putting in what he saw as his duty as Dooley's successor.

She didn't owe him friendship or, perhaps, even kindness. 

But she didn't particularly want to go back there either.

"Do you have another of those?" she asked, with a nod to the cigarette. She settled herself with her back against the cenotaph beside him.

The look that he gave her was somewhere between anger and bafflement. "You smoke?"

"Only sometimes," she said. She had done it only rarely during the war, but it _did_ soothe the nerves, sometimes.

"Huh," Jack said. He could have sent her away; she suspected he'd have no compunctions about doing so, if he really wanted to be alone. Instead he shook out another cigarette from the pack in his pocket. He handed it to her, and after she took it and put it to her lips, he lit it from a silver lighter.

Peggy coughed a little on the first inhale. "I _don't_ miss how this makes one's tongue feel as if one has licked a subway floor."

"Lick a lot of subway floors, do you?" Jack asked. He leaned back against the marble side of the cenotaph. His voice was back to normal, if roughened slightly at the edges, and he seemed normal enough aside from the slight reddening around the eyes.

Peggy managed to find the rhythm of inhale and exhale on the cigarette, pulling in just enough not to scorch her lungs, but enough to experience the slight, pleasant buzz. Filthy habit, most unsuitable for women, which she thought had been part of the appeal for her at those times when she _had_ indulged during the war.

"That's definitely an outfit you've got there, Peggy. I didn't realize Macy's had a babushka floor."

"And I didn't know you had such a finely honed eye for women's fashions, Jack."

"It's called an eye for detail, Carter."

Peggy looked up at the sky, where the clouds were showing an inconvenient tendency to clear away, exposing a great deal of blue. Walking back to the SSR car in this wool dress was going to be like walking through a steam bath.

"It's all rather a lot, isn't it?" she said.

Jack gave a short laugh that turned into a brief cough. Some of the rough edge to his voice was just the cigarettes, she thought. Macho image or not, he probably didn't smoke any more than she did. "That's one way of putting it, Carter."

He subtly (he probably thought) wiped at the edge of his eyes with the back of his hand, while Peggy looked up at the startlingly blue sky. It looked like summer was setting in for real.

"You know, I had a brother," she said, surprising herself.

"Older or younger?" Jack asked after a moment. Interesting ... that was something people didn't generally ask, on the rare occasions when she spoke of it.

"Older," Peggy said. "His name was Michael. He died when I was nineteen."

"Which company?" Jack asked.

"He was with the intelligence service, actually. The SOE asked for me on Michael's recommendation."

It occurred to her only as the words left her mouth -- strange, she'd never really thought of this before -- that one reason why she never spoke of Michael was because, among those who knew what she really did for a living, nearly all of them would have taken Michael as the reason why she had the job, just as they had once taken Steve for that; and unlike Steve, with Michael they would truly have cause. She had spent a very long time learning how to protect her back. And it was, quite often, friendly fire she had to protect it from.

And she knew all too well how quickly Jack could turn. She had just handed him a rather telling piece of ammunition.

But all he said was, "Good judge of character, this Michael fellow. I think I might've liked him."

He hadn't smoked his cigarette down as she had with hers; instead, he took out a small silver flask and screwed the cap one-handed. He held it out to her, offering the first sip.

Peggy took a drink. It was strong, burning the smoke-sensitized back of her tongue. She handed it back and Jack took a long gulp that must have drained half the flask. He offered it to her again; she shook her head, and he drank again and put it away.

Then he stamped out his cigarette, and took a look out out over the cemetery -- painted now in vivid green and gold, with the moisture from last night's rains smoking off in curls of steam. "Nice place," he said. "If you gotta pick a view for all time, it's not a bad one."

"It is," Peggy said, and she wondered if they were both thinking the same thing: that there was nothing of Dooley here, not really; his mortal remains were vaporized over a New York street a few days ago. But then, there had been little left of Michael to bury either. Her mother still left flowers twice a week at an empty grave, she knew.

"Going back to the office after this?" Jack asked.

"Where else?"

He smiled, just a little, creasing the reddened skin around his eyes. "Look at your desk when you get in. I was thinking you might want to look into those shipping manifest discrepancies on the Hoboken docks. Could be Leviathan, could be Hydra, could be some night watchman getting a little greedy."

"A thrilling saga," Peggy said with resignation, and then turned sharply. "Wait, you don't just mean going over the shipping manifests, do you?"

"Hope you don't have plans, Carter, because you're on stakeout duty until further notice," Jack said. He bent to collect the cigarette butt in a slightly used handkerchief, and left the cenotaph's shadow for the sunshine.

Peggy smoked down the last of her cigarette; who knew when she'd bother with another one. Her throat was scratchy with an unpleasant mix of bourbon and smoke -- the mingled taste of grief, past and present. The dress was too stiff and too hot. It would be quite unsuited for fieldwork; she'd have to stop back by Howard's and change. 

Fieldwork. She wondered if she would have had it from Dooley, or if he'd have simply given her back her secretary's duties, with a nod and a smile.

Grief begat nostalgia. It was easy to think well of the dead. Harder, perhaps, to be the ones moving forward.

She smoked the last drag of the cigarette for Michael, then crushed it out and went to find out what her first official field assignment would be like.


End file.
